Lessons

Lesson Info

Adobe Bridge Basics

This is photoshopped one o one, so I'm gonna assume that you don't generally know anything about photo shop, but at the same time, I'm going to assume that you know something about your computer and other things, so I'm not going to, uh, you know, start you at one o one when it comes to absolutely everything, but what we're going to do is we have three days here, I'm going to try to concentrate a bit on working on projects where, instead of touring the interface and saying now we're going to look at every single preference that exists in all of federal shop that's not the most exciting thing to do and most the time you don't need everything if you just touring the interface so instead we're going to be looking at how do we use photo shop for projects and in the process of doing so will learn more and more about photoshopped throughout three days, but each time, hopefully will be something that's actually usable that we're working on instead of creating something just for the sake of ta...

lking about a feature, and you'll find that I use more projects in the second day, though on the first, because on the first day, there are some things we do just need to get out of the way. And I can't always associate with a project eso what we're going to do is today we're going to concentrate on adjustments because usually before I end up using my images and some sort of a project, I need to make sure they look good and so will concentrate today. An adjustments will start off using a part of photo shop called adobe camera raw just because that's, where most of my images first get adjusted, then we'll pop into photo shop and we'll get used to using what's known as an adjustment layer and howto isolate areas within a picture. So if I want to just brighten somebody's face instead of the whole photo, that type of thing, you know how to do so on the second day, we're going to get mohr into layers, and that means if you have an image that is going to be made out of more than one part. If it's more than one photograph, you're trying to combine together or maybe it's more than one version of the same photograph, like I took one that was dark, I took one that was bright, but it's the exact same photo and I want to put those two photos together as one I'm going to need to use layers most of the time to do that. And so tomorrow we're going to concentrate a lot on layers and part of that will be projects where if we need to create like a wedding invite or just married announcement or something like that so that is a photographer if that happens to be what you d'oh, you're not just delivering straight photographs, but you could do something with those photographs to kind of add more value to them in possibly get higher firm or thing is s o will be getting in the layers quite a bit on the second day on the third day will talk more about retouching, so if you need to remove anything from a photo or fix something that's wrong with it, you'll not do that and we'll explore more of the creative uses of photo shop so filters and if you want your picture to look a little bit more like a painting or something else, we might cover that on the third day. So anyway, today we're going to concentrate like I said on adjustments in what I've done here is I've reset photo shops, preferences, both photo shop and bridge bridge comes with photo shop so that it should look like you just installed it for whatever it is I do and that's what I'll just assume that you have if you don't try to steer you, uh where you'll know how to get to where I am and I'll show you how I'd like to customize photo shop just to get it to be the most convenient that type of thing but in general I want to jump in and start adjusting pictures relatively quickly so first off if I want to open images I'm going to usually do so through bridge now bridge comes usually with photo shop if you install photo shop one year options is to also install bridge you don't have to buy separately comes with it and I'm going to go to bridge I haven't launched right now and usually in bridge on the left side is where you navigate your hard drive and so over there I have two different tabs zoom up on that a little easier for you to see I congar tow my folders or my favorites since we haven't set up any favorites yet this will have some generic choices in it like going to your desktop documents or pictures folder but we can put whatever we want over there and our favorites if there's a folder where you typically keep your images you can store it over there on your favorites otherwise you can click over here on folders and this should be a list of what's on your hard drive so in my case I happen to have my files stored on my desktop and was just little triangle next to it I could expand it and navigate to whatever folder I would like. And so it just reflects the structure of your hard drive and there's nothing I need to do, too, get my images to be recognized in here, because this is just like being in your operating system and navigating your hard drive. The difference is when I click on a folder on the right side in the middle of my screen, I'm going to see previews of all my images might call those thumbnails, and if I want to change the size of those previews, I have really to general methods were doing so at the very bottom edge of my screen is a slider bar near the bottom, right? And if I grab that little slider bar and slide it to the right, the previous will get larger, slide him to the left, and they're going to get smaller, but I personally never used that slider bar just because it's inconvenient for me to always have to move to the bottom edge of my screen, and it doesn't feel all that precise moving it around so you can often use a keyboard shortcut in the keyboard shortcut that I use is to hold down the command key in a macintosh that's the control came windows, and then you compress the plus or minus keys on your keyboard, and if I do command, plus it will zoom up to make the thumbnails larger. And if I do command minus, it will zoom out to make them smaller, and it doesn't just the right amount where it fits precisely the number of images across the screen. So when I took command plus, if I had five images across the screen now I'm gonna have four if I hit it again, I'll have three and so on across the screen, whereas using that cider bar you'll get, like halfway in between certain sizes and it's like where it's inefficient and its layout. So I usually do command, plus and minus, but some people just don't use photo shop enough where you don't remember keyboard shortcuts, and if so, then head down to the bottom. Use your slider bar, but once you get used to it, you can do command plus in command, minus instead. Now what I'd like to do in here is first off these images all have the file names that came from the camera, and I try to stay away from those file names because eventually your camera will reset itself and start off numbering with zero again. And if he end up shooting for years and years, you're going to have a whole bunch of photos that will have the exact same file names in multiple folders. On your hard drive and if you ever start working on a project where you happen to want to let's, say, create a portfolio of images and you're going to grab from more than one folder and dragged them somewhere else like toe email to someone else. Suddenly you might have some files that have the same file name. Or if somebody tells you I really liked the file that has this particular file name, would you please send me a larger version of it and you go and search for that file name? There might be ten versions of it because you use the generic file names from your camera and it resets to zero after a certain amount of time, certain number pictures. So I always try to give mine unique names to do that in bridge. You could come over here and click on the file name that's just underneath the thumbnails, and if you click on it, it should highlight the file name and you could type in something new, and then you click on the next one and do the same thing. If you wanted to do that for a large number of images, you could type in a name here, press the tab key, it would send you the next picture, and you could just type in another name, hit tab again and just cycle through them all. I mainly would do that if I just created, like, a portfolio of images for a client, and I want the file names to more useful for them compared to what I might use for myself, where I have mohr images to deal with. So my file names might be a little more structured. But if he's just came off the camera and I want to name them for me, what I would do to rename the mall is first I need to select them all so there's a bunch of different ways we can do that. But if you go to the edit menu there's a choice in there called select all and use it so often that you'll get used to the keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut is command a and I should mention for those of you that use windows, this is the command symbol on a mac. If you ever see it on my screen, that's what it looks like when I say the command key and the equivalent on windows is the control key. It's. Easy to remember, because command control buff both start with the letter c. So command control, same thing also in the mac, just so you know, there's, an option key in it's, the quill into the hull, turkey and windows. So if I ever mentioned option, it means all time windows I'll try to mention that every time but if ever slip up and happen did not option always means ault so I can either go to the edit menu and choose select all or I can type command a to get them all selected then if I want to rename them I could go to the tools menu and up there I'm gonna find a choice. The very first one is called battery name and that just means rename a whole bunch of images so it's under the tools menu called batch rename now it's only gonna rename those files that we currently have selected, so you have to be careful that you don't just have a few images selected uh that's why we chose select all first come over here choose batch rename and this comes up now at the very top of a choice for presets. So if you rename your files constantly using the same general formula for how to rename them, you could create a preset that you come back to a time and time again, but we're not going to be doing that right now because we haven't learned to rename yet below that we have to tell it where to put these files this choice renamed in same folder is just going to leave the files exactly where they are and just change their names I could instead tell it to move it to another folder. I might use that if I had copied by images to let's say, my desktop, when I was in the field shooting and now I just got home and I no longer want it on my laptop. I want him on a hard drive that's, external that's where I store all my files so I could tell it instead of renaming it sitting right here on this hard drive, my internal drive, I could say move it to a folder on a different drive, maybe one that's, an external that I store all my files on, or I could choose copy to another folder, and therefore I would have two versions of it, the original ones still sitting there with the original file names and then these copies and that I might use if I have the files on this particular hard drive about to give them to a client. But I want the clients to have a different file name. I don't want there's tohave like the client name and other things. I wanted to be more useful names for them, but I don't want to mess up mine uh, my master folder of things, so I'm just going to make a copy and a different folder, but for us, well recent renaming the same folder if you choose one of the other two options will be a button below that called brows, and you can browse your hard drive too. Tell it where uh, you would like it to copy or move the pictures too below that. Here we have an area where we can create kind of a formula for how you construct a name, and we have many different choices on how to do this right now it shows us a total of four fields that's because it assumes I'm going to type in the name of a project like maybe a particular person's last name, and then the word wedding and then it's going to insert the date a dash and then a number we'll just number the files most the time for me, I end up having pretty simple set ups here and on the right side, you'll find a plus than a minus button where you can simplify the formula used to make the renaming by hitting the minus sign here to get rid of choices, or if you find us too simple of a formula, you can hit the plus sign, and it'll add mohr of these choices just kind of stacked them up, so for me, I'm gonna just name this first field beat shoot, I'm gonna hit the space bar so that if it numbers my files, that number doesn't bump right up into the file name and then down here if I want tohave it just number my pictures that's called a sequence number and so a sequence number means little. Just start with whatever number you tell it to and just add one to it for each subsequent file in the number that's down here means what number should I start with? What'll happen is the next time I use batch rename it will type in whatever number it ended in last. So if I rename this folder, this folder happens to have ninety seven pictures to the last number is going to ada's ninety seven. Next time I use us the number in that field would be ninety eight because it's, assuming I might add to this folder and I just need to rename what's freshly added, I find that to be annoying most of the time because I'm constantly selecting and hitting the number one because I wanted to most of the time start fresh over on the right side. Then it asked me how many digits? And before I choose that I can look just outside of this dialog box at bridge, you'll see bridge behind it in the lower left of bridge, you'll find some numbers. It'll tell you right now there's ninety seven items in this particular folder in ninety seven of them are selected meaning we're going to rename ninety seven pictures right now and so that tells me I can get away with a two digit number on the end we're not goingto end up maxing out that number and having to reset to one again so if you just glanced down there you can determine how many digits you might need it in the end or you could just standardize most of the time it's rare for me to shoot mohr than um more than nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine pictures in a chute it's just I'm not that prolific of a shooter uh and so I could just standard as in four digits and use it every single time ever do it and therefore you don't think so it's up to you let's just look at a few of the choices that are available when you re name if I click on this little pop up menu we have a couple options we can start with the current file name so if you just if the filings already great and you want to add onto it may be the they add on you're going to add is going to be the word retouched or you know updated or whatever it is that you want to be different you could start with the current file name and then the next part of your formula would be some texts that would be whatever you're adding to the current file name you can do a sequence letter so instead of having the files number that could be unlettered a b c d you can put in the date what name in the folder it's in that type of thing there is one choice in here that special it's called string substitution you know what it really means a search and replace so that let's say that you just renamed an entire folder of images perfectly named with some complex name structure that has the date on it the client name some number on the end and all that and you realize you mis typed the client's name and it be an embarrassment to send the files over there with the wrong name, innit? Well with string substitution it will allow you to type in a before and an after for part of the file name so I could say search for, you know, a guy named sean and I spelled it one particular spelling and I'm going to replace it with the actual spelling they use because they use something different than I assumed. So anyway, that's the type of choices you'll find in there and then down here there's a choice that's called preserve current file name an ex mp metadata ex mp metadata is text that's attached to your picture that usually don't see unless you look for it using a tool like bridge and that's, where you have things like your shutter speed, your aperture setting. What camera model this was shot with the date was sean, all that kind of stuff was just text related to the picture that's not actually part of the picture itself. That's what metadata means, and so the time I would turn this on is if I ever took notes when I was shooting let's say, I'm shooting with my camera, I have a note pad with me on done shooting one child for a photo shoot, and I grab my note pad. I write down the last file name on my actual camera when I review it, and then I write the the kid's name next to it, and then I continue shooting, and before I'm done, I write down them the end of the next sequence of images, whatever the file name is that I actually seeing my camera, and then I write down what what's the subject matter was there I might want to keep those original file names, that they're usually overly generic, not overly useful, and that's, where I might do is just turn that on, then there's, a way within bridge where we could review that and actually see the original file names otherwise ninety eight percent of the time I'm not taking notes. I don't care about the file names for my camera because they just weren't important. If you turn on these little check boxes for compatibility, it will simply limit what kind of text you can use up here so that it's compatible with these operating systems if they're special characters that they don't support that type of thing and it will have great out whatever operating system you're on because it's got to be compatible with yours, it's on your hard drive and then finally at the bottom it's going to tell me that this is an example of a file name, usually the first one that's in that folder in the construction you've made up above that little formula for a file name? This is what it would end up renaming it, too, just so you can double check that you're really getting what you're thinking ofthe most the time what you'll notice down here is you forgot to put a space on the end. If you wanted one before that, any kind of sequence number it put in that type of thing, then I'm going to just hit the rename button, and when I d'oh, it'll just take a second, and now all of my images and renamed and so I try to do that, where I use a unique name for each photo that I shoot, and often times I end up having the date to the shoot at the beginning, just because sometimes have returned to the same subject matter over and over again, and I might not realise I have another folder that I called beat shoot, because I'm thinking of the beach more than once. So oftentimes I have the data at the beginning, which will usually be at least a year and month, then on a descriptive name for whatever the shoot was, and then a number, and therefore, most the time, I'm not going to end up with any duplicates, and therefore, if I ever put together a portfolio ten years from now, combined photos into a particular folder given to a client, and they say, I really liked this file, and they give me the file name there's, only one file on my entire hard drive that matches that and so it's, easy to keep track of, all right, so in bridge, remember, on the upper left that's where we had the choice called folders. This is where we navigate our hard drive to wherever it is we want to view our images, and all we're doing is clicking on these little triangles to expand or collapse the folders to see sub folders. And when I click on the particular folder, I would like to view that's when I see my thumbnails in the middle. Also just above that is what some would call the path bar. And that means immediately above it will tell you the path you needed to navigate to get to this particular folder. So if you started on your computer, then this is the name of my hard drive. And if I was actually in my operating system manually navigating this is the path I would need to take to get to this folder. What's nice about that is if you ever want to go back a level just kind of back out of your hard drive a bit. You could click on one of these folders like this one in it'll back you up that far is if you navigated your hard drives, you don't always have to deal with the structure that's on the left side to do it. You can instead just come in here. If you see folders you want, just double click on the big folder icons here to navigate. And then this tells you where you are. If you want to go back a bit in your navigation, just click on one of these folders to the left. Now what I'd like to do is imagine I literally went out did a beach shoot here with some horses running on the beach and I want to edit them down because I don't want to process every single picture we have ninety seven pictures think about how much time it would take to process ninety seven images what I want to do is think about how kanai most effectively narrow these down to just those worth processing and how am I how my I might think about should I delete any of them? Should I how do I know which ones are the best for being processed that type of thing so here's what I'm going to dio I mean it click on an image and when I do in the upper right I'll see a preview now at this time the previous pretty small that's just because we have a relatively small screen usually I have a screen that can show much more information and this would be larger but in bridge each one of these areas each one of these kind of pains that aaron bridge have a little divider bar do you see like a vertical bar between the preview in the thumbnails that air here if you click on that little divider bar I'm gonna grab it right here you can drag and expand out to enlarge any particular area of bridge and so if I make that preview area wider and I grabbed the horizontal divider bar right below it and make it taller. I can get that preview to be relatively large, and if I'm done navigating my hard drive on the left side and I don't really need it to take up space over here, I can grab vertical divider bar that is just on the right edge of it click on it, drag that over and say, I don't want you to take up much space, I can even drag it all the way to the edge, so you can't even see what's there. If you want to get that area back, the divider bar is still there, and you can just click on it and pull it back on. You'll see that area show up again. The other thing that I could do with these little pains that make up a bridge is aiken collapsed down certain parts of them. So over here we have my folder structure in the upper left and just below it are some other choices, something called a filter in collections, which we haven't talked about yet, and if I find that taking up too much space, I would rather see my hard drives navigation there I could go to the name of any one of these pains and just double click on it when I double click. It'll collapse it down so all you see is little tab and if I come down and double click on it a second time, it'll expanded again just be careful if you change from different screen sizes on occasion you'll find that this seems to get stuck down at the bottom where you double click on it and it just seems to sit there and if that ever happens it's the equivalent to this being expanded it is if you're actually using it and you grab the divider bar to pull it down like this and you just happened to drag it down so that all you see is the tab and it thinks that that's the expanded version you know you only allowed it that much space and now when I double click it just collapsed it down I double click again and it seems like it doesn't do much uh and that's just because you got oh pull that up you can actually tell if it's truly collapsed or not if you zoom up well, you can't zoom up, get your face closer do you see this little there's this microscopic little double bar right there that's like supposed to be a gripper if that's their it means that you can pull on it to resize it if it's not like when I collapsed this, I'll zoom up on the same area can you tell there's no a little double bar there that means there's no grabber there's no something that to grab so if you double click on this and doubleclick doesn't seem to be doing anything but those little bar show up and disappear when they show up it means you can pull on it when they're not there it means it's truly collapsed it's a weird kind of odd thing and in bridge in general where that can happen it happens to me all the time because what'll happen is I'll teach on a big screen like a twenty seven inch external monitor and I'll come here to teach where I'm just using the internal screen and it gets confused because it used to have a huge window and now it's on a small screen innit axes if I've shorten those things up so when I double click on him it doesn't seem to do anything and so I just wanted to mention that if you happen to not be able to pull on it double click on the name and you'll suddenly be ableto pull on that so if I want to get rid of some of these areas like I want my preview to be nice and big I can get rid of this area at the bottom that says metadata and key words by double clicking on the name of one of those tabs and it'll collapse it down making more space for my preview but that preview on the side I don't use that much I find that oftentimes I like the thumbnails to take up a lot of space and so sometimes I'll drag the divider bar all the way to the right to get rid of that side so I can really concentrate now on navigating my hard drive on the left side and looking at these thumbnails on the right side then in order to really see my images there's a trick there's a keyboard shortcut if you press the space bar any time you press the space bar, it'll take whatever image you currently have selected and you just click once on the image you want selected few hit space bar it'll make it feel your screen you had space bar again it just gives you send you back so space bar is kind of a toggle for full screen or backto whatever you had before that when you hit space bar so you're looking at a full screen you can then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate between the images. So if I hit the right arrow key and my keyboard, it'll go to the next picture the next picture and so on and when you're in this view where your viewing a full screen it doesn't matter if you hit the writer left arrow keys to navigate or the up and down ones, they'll do the same thing whereas if I was out of this, it would matter, because the down arrow would send me down in the grid. That's here and left and right would send me left and right, which would be quite different. But when you're viewing only one image at a time, it doesn't matter. Up and down. Eros is the same general concept is writer left arrows, itjust means next or previous image. So I hit my space bar there and now I can go through in cycle, through these images that were shot at the beach. But I want to know how can I narrow him down so I don't have to process ninety seven images?